1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to lottery ticket validation systems, and more particularly, to validation systems that maintain data bases of validated tickets.
2. Description of Related Art
The invention relates to a dynamic lottery ticket validation system, and more particularly, to a process of validating instant lottery tickets on-line or through a dial-up network while keeping storage requirements low and validation speed high. To achieve these goals, the present invention utilizes a compression process to store the data compactly. This process also increases security with respect to the data. Memory is allocated dynamically to ensure efficient use of memory.
Instant lottery ticket games typically are conducted over a large geographic area--e.g., state-wide, and use a series of lottery terminals that are connected to a central computer to validate winning tickets that are being redeemed. It is considered desirable that the terminals be capable of determining whether any given ticket presented to be paid already has been paid. In addition, a system must be able to communicate the fact that a ticket has been paid so that if the ticket is later stolen or fraudulently presented for payment, it is not paid again.
Hence, all of the lottery terminals must have access to a data base that contains information as to which tickets already have been paid. The data base must be able to convey information at high speed so that the validation process takes only a few seconds. Moreover, the data base must be able to update the list of validated tickets quickly.
One approach to validation methodology for instant lottery tickets is to maintain a "flag" in a data base for each ticket that identifies the ticket as paid or unpaid. This approach requires a unique flag for every ticket in a game.
The next logical step is to maintain flags only for the potential winning tickets. Thus, if only one fourth of the tickets in a given pack are winning tickets, the system can reduce the number of flags required by three quarters because losing tickets are ignored. Assuming each flag is one bit (e.g., 0=unpaid, 1=paid), the status of the potential winning tickets can be stored as a string of successive bits. Typically, the information for each pack of lottery tickets is stored as a pack record.
This methodology currently is utilized in several lotteries. It does, however, have at least three drawbacks. First, the "paid" bits are clearly identifiable within the pack record, and are therefore reasonably ascertainable. As a result, a person who steals tickets and manages to gain access to the data base may be able to determine which tickets already have been paid. By only presenting the unpaid winning tickets in a pack, this person may be able to escape detection. Second, the number of tickets remaining to be paid in a pack is also "visible" which would provide whomever is in possession of the pack with information as to the value of the pack. Finally, each of the existing systems mentioned requires storing a data field of a fixed length no matter how many tickets have been validated.
Hence, a system providing for added security while maintaining compact storage requirements is desirable.